This is what those who have never experienced genuine depression will never understand. Everything can be going perfectly in your life, but you still can’t find the energy to bring color back into your world no matter what you do. The overwhelming numbness just eats away at you, and you withdraw even further. Some of us may even turn to substances to just feel SOMETHING, regardless of how fleeting the escape may be, and how much worse we know we’ll feel afterwards. You are unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the future is bleak, and you will die alone in a world that doesn’t give a fuck, so what’s the point?
So you finally find the courage to confide in somebody, and they tell you that you just need to “get past it, think positive!” and that they also “get depressed too”… and the worst part is, you are unable to describe to them in any way how it truly feels, because they’ve genuinely never felt it themselves, so now you worry that you’re just coming across as dramatic, furthering the desire to withdraw and keep your thoughts to yourself.
I’m currently going through a depressed period, if it isn’t obvious. I’ll be okay in another week, but it’s fucking horrible, and I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.
What I hated most about my depression is it would take anything that happened and make it terrible. I got a promotion? Great, more work to do. My wife cooked my favorite meal? Great, now there’s a ton of dishes to do. I’m gonna take a break and play a game? I’ll probably lose, why bother playing.
And this fatalism morphed into anxiety that made it so I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I’d lay there paralyzed with fear about failing at everything that day, to the point where I’d set my alarm to go off early just so I could have time to have a panic attack.
One thing that helped me a lot was to give that little voice a name, and then tell it to fuck off every time it spoke up.
another good trick is to give the voice a stupid cartoonish voice: make it say things like goofy… it disarms it if it sounds ridiculous
(also works for intrusive thoughts about yourself: they’re late because they don’t want to spend time with me, they say they like my thing but they sounded sarcastic, etc)
Humans have a lot of different cognitive processes that interact in ways that are still being studied. If you’re in a country with good medical infrastucture, ask your doctor about cognitive behavioral therapy. If not, try meditation: sit in a quiet area and focus on counting your breaths from 1 to 10 repeatedly. If a thought pops up just wordlessly acknowledge it and let it go. The part of you that’s left is (usually!) at peace.
Also if cbt doesn’t work for you try ndsr, it helped my wife where cbt didn’t. It’s more of an acceptance based focus with inspired by Buddhist philosophy.
That said, cbt helps me a lot with my plethora of anxieties. By learning to calmly analyze my fears as they wash over me I’ve become able to deal with the problems and minimize the non problems, which is especially helpful because as someone with adhd I often latch on to real problems because I’m bad at juggling life.
it’s not a different voice to start with: i hear it as… my inner monologue i guess?… sometimes not even a voice exactly; it’s just a feeling… but if you repeat it, or put the feeling into a voice and say it in a ridiculous way then that, for me, overrides the original feeling
maybe it’s acknowledging it exists, thinking about it, and then turning it ridiculous makes you consciously put it into a “fuck you that feeling is false” category… i’m not really sure beyond here :p
I would go as far as to argue that if your life sucks and you aren’t happy about it that probably isn’t mental illness. That’s just having a shit life, and is a healthy response to your shit circumstances.
Not to say that can’t cause depression, of course. But just being unhappy about your shit life is not in of itself depression.
Yeah I think a lot of 4chan has other mental issues (often failure to launch or other sociodevelopmental problems, maybe not even innate or biological) that results in a shit life and being miserable and so they think they have depression when the reality is their life just sucks.
I don’t have depression but I’ve been in a bad place in life, when I improved my life or got what I needed I felt better. And sometimes it’s other issues that can look a lot like depression. But those of us like that need to remember y’all because what worked for us won’t work for y’all,
That’s kind of inaccurate. The whole brain being broken thing. Sometimes depression is caused by outside factors. To say it’s just your brain and it’s broken, implies that it can’t be fixed. And many times it can be, by fixing the outside factor that’s causing you to go into depression
I think we as a culture need to learn to separate those two conditions. I have what you describe, when certain things go wrong I tend to numb up about it. But my wife has the other kind where her natural mental state is numbness and it requires a combination of medication and lifestyle and cognitive behavioral changes to fix. I can understand that because I have anxiety and adhd that work like her depression.
In general if you have depressive symptoms and your life is shit or you have something you think might help you should try fixing that shit, whether it’s eating better and exercising or getting out more or something like trying hormones (gender dysphoria often has a similar blanket dullness feeling to depression), but if all that doesn’t work or if you’re unable to achieve these things or you have other reasons to believe it’s the broken brain sort medication can help, but it has its own trade offs for you and your doctor to discuss and decide.
I had even more than him, and I was suicidally depressed at one point.
It’s literally your brain being broken. What’s happening outside doesn’t really matter.
This is what those who have never experienced genuine depression will never understand. Everything can be going perfectly in your life, but you still can’t find the energy to bring color back into your world no matter what you do. The overwhelming numbness just eats away at you, and you withdraw even further. Some of us may even turn to substances to just feel SOMETHING, regardless of how fleeting the escape may be, and how much worse we know we’ll feel afterwards. You are unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the future is bleak, and you will die alone in a world that doesn’t give a fuck, so what’s the point?
So you finally find the courage to confide in somebody, and they tell you that you just need to “get past it, think positive!” and that they also “get depressed too”… and the worst part is, you are unable to describe to them in any way how it truly feels, because they’ve genuinely never felt it themselves, so now you worry that you’re just coming across as dramatic, furthering the desire to withdraw and keep your thoughts to yourself.
I’m currently going through a depressed period, if it isn’t obvious. I’ll be okay in another week, but it’s fucking horrible, and I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.
What I hated most about my depression is it would take anything that happened and make it terrible. I got a promotion? Great, more work to do. My wife cooked my favorite meal? Great, now there’s a ton of dishes to do. I’m gonna take a break and play a game? I’ll probably lose, why bother playing.
And this fatalism morphed into anxiety that made it so I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I’d lay there paralyzed with fear about failing at everything that day, to the point where I’d set my alarm to go off early just so I could have time to have a panic attack.
One thing that helped me a lot was to give that little voice a name, and then tell it to fuck off every time it spoke up.
another good trick is to give the voice a stupid cartoonish voice: make it say things like goofy… it disarms it if it sounds ridiculous
(also works for intrusive thoughts about yourself: they’re late because they don’t want to spend time with me, they say they like my thing but they sounded sarcastic, etc)
Ooo, that’s a good one! Like “yoUr cowoRKeRs DOn’t ACTUALLy LIke YOU” or “yoU’Re GONNA gO BrOKE anD LIVe On tHe STrEET.”
Gawrsh, my buddy Donald has better luck working than you do! Guess you’re gonna keep being nothing! A-hyuck!
…actually yeah. This is helping. I’ll keep this in my back pocket.
So question: does it feel like another voice to you? For me I just feel like I’m talking to myself, or no voice at all, just first-person thoughts.
Is part of the work kinda externalizing that part of you, and giving it a voice?
Humans have a lot of different cognitive processes that interact in ways that are still being studied. If you’re in a country with good medical infrastucture, ask your doctor about cognitive behavioral therapy. If not, try meditation: sit in a quiet area and focus on counting your breaths from 1 to 10 repeatedly. If a thought pops up just wordlessly acknowledge it and let it go. The part of you that’s left is (usually!) at peace.
Also if cbt doesn’t work for you try ndsr, it helped my wife where cbt didn’t. It’s more of an acceptance based focus with inspired by Buddhist philosophy.
That said, cbt helps me a lot with my plethora of anxieties. By learning to calmly analyze my fears as they wash over me I’ve become able to deal with the problems and minimize the non problems, which is especially helpful because as someone with adhd I often latch on to real problems because I’m bad at juggling life.
it’s not a different voice to start with: i hear it as… my inner monologue i guess?… sometimes not even a voice exactly; it’s just a feeling… but if you repeat it, or put the feeling into a voice and say it in a ridiculous way then that, for me, overrides the original feeling
maybe it’s acknowledging it exists, thinking about it, and then turning it ridiculous makes you consciously put it into a “fuck you that feeling is false” category… i’m not really sure beyond here :p
Thank you, that is a helpful exercise. I’m going to try that
Hey at least the voice still talks to you. I’m so far gone even my depression abandoned me.
I would go as far as to argue that if your life sucks and you aren’t happy about it that probably isn’t mental illness. That’s just having a shit life, and is a healthy response to your shit circumstances.
Not to say that can’t cause depression, of course. But just being unhappy about your shit life is not in of itself depression.
EXACTLY. These people think sadness = depression. Unhappiness is depression.
Depression is depression. It can happen to anyone. Even those with seemingly plenty of goodness in their lives.
It’s a classic incel viewpoint.
“Girls talk to you because you talk to them! Don’t give me some bullshit it about being depressed!”
Troofax
Yeah I think a lot of 4chan has other mental issues (often failure to launch or other sociodevelopmental problems, maybe not even innate or biological) that results in a shit life and being miserable and so they think they have depression when the reality is their life just sucks.
I don’t have depression but I’ve been in a bad place in life, when I improved my life or got what I needed I felt better. And sometimes it’s other issues that can look a lot like depression. But those of us like that need to remember y’all because what worked for us won’t work for y’all,
That’s kind of inaccurate. The whole brain being broken thing. Sometimes depression is caused by outside factors. To say it’s just your brain and it’s broken, implies that it can’t be fixed. And many times it can be, by fixing the outside factor that’s causing you to go into depression
I think we as a culture need to learn to separate those two conditions. I have what you describe, when certain things go wrong I tend to numb up about it. But my wife has the other kind where her natural mental state is numbness and it requires a combination of medication and lifestyle and cognitive behavioral changes to fix. I can understand that because I have anxiety and adhd that work like her depression.
In general if you have depressive symptoms and your life is shit or you have something you think might help you should try fixing that shit, whether it’s eating better and exercising or getting out more or something like trying hormones (gender dysphoria often has a similar blanket dullness feeling to depression), but if all that doesn’t work or if you’re unable to achieve these things or you have other reasons to believe it’s the broken brain sort medication can help, but it has its own trade offs for you and your doctor to discuss and decide.